Welcome to our forum dedicated to one of the highlights of the UK dance year – the visit of the Kirov to London's Royal Opera House. This forum is the place for our day to day coverage of the visit.

Here you will find previews, interviews and reviews both from our own writers and from the national press.

In addition, do visit our Kirov Special page, where we have various features including an image gallery and links to the websites of some of the organisations who are involved with the visit. We are indebted to the very talented David Watson who designed the page for us.

But most of all we want to hear your views. So do post your own comments about the dancers, the ballets and all thinks Kirov in the topics already set up below.

If you are a new or recent visitor to CriticalDance we have a Guide to help you around.

We hope you enjoy the Kirov London season 2003, whether in person at the Royal Opera House or reading about it here.

Reasons to be Cheerful - the Kirov Ballet are coming to London in 2003 by Cassandra for CriticalDance

There was a time in the not so distant past when London audiences were consistently denied sight of the Russian companies, a time when that infamous iron curtain was lifted only on those rare occasions when relationships between Downing Street and the Kremlin happened to be good and sadly for us ballet lovers that wasn’t very often. Glasnost in the ‘80’s changed all that and now visits from Russian companies and Russian artists are a regular occurrence. In the past our knowledge of Russian style was all too often limited only to those dancers bold enough to look beyond the constraints of the system, attracted by the diversity of the western repertoire.

The Kirov/Mariinsky Ballet An overview of the history of this famous company from their website.

The Mariinsky Ballet Company is closely linked with the entire history of the development of Russian choreographic art which began more than two and a half centuries ago. An important role in the establishment and evolution of Russian ballet was played by foreign masters. At the end of the 18th century, Franz Gilferding, Gasparo Angiolini, Giuseppe Canziani and Charles le Picqué were all working in St Petersburg. Already in the 1790´s, however, the first Russian ballet teacher, Ivan Valberkh, came to the fore. The main sphere of his activities was in a small mime ballet company. He sought to make his productions rich in subject matter and to create recognisable, lifelike images.

Ballet divertissements, reflecting his response to the events of the Napoleonic War, occupied a special place in his work. The history of St Petersburg ballet in the 19th century was associated with the activities of Charles Didelot, Jules Perrot, and Arthur Saint-Léon. In 1869, the position of principal ballet master was entrusted to Marius Petipa who markedly raised the professional standards of the company. The peak accomplishments of this famous master became ballets staged in the period of his collaboration with the composers Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Alexander Glazunov - The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake and Raymonda.

Clement Crisp adores the Kirov and is no doubt looking forward to a wonderful three weeks:

Kirov Ballet looks to its noble bloodline By Clement Crisp for The Financial Times

St Petersburg. Green and ochre facades glowing in the pearly light of a northern winter; spires flashing in summer; an imperial (and haunted) city, whose dancers incarnate in their manner something of its splendour of scale. Its history - under tsars and commissars - is reflected in the changing titles of its grandest theatre. Named after an empress, renamed after one of Stalin's henchmen, the Mariinsky Theatre, later the Kirov, is the Mariinsky again, and its ballet visits London to mark the tercentenary of Tsar Peter's creation of the city.

The Kirov Ballet - as it still calls itself on foreign tours - first came to London in 1961, heralded by the scandal of Nureyev's leap to freedom in Paris the week before.

Later: Dear Reader, have a good laugh at this. We rang the ROH Box Office and were given revised casting, which turned out to be baloney. It's not their fault - they're not included in the loop by the Kirov.

We have learned our lesson.

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Folks, it ain't easy, but we'll do our best to keep you informed of cast changes, but many will only be revealed on the day.

We try very hard to avoid rumours etc, but we also work on the basis that audiences have a right to up to date casting information. We have now heard from two reliable sources that Kuznetsov will not be performing at all in the season. He was scheduled for two further performances of "Le Corsaire".

If Fadeyev replaces Kuznetsov in the remaining performances of "Le Corsaire" and keeps his other roles, he will have 9 leads over the three weeks, which is more than any other male dancer.

That's debatable Emma. But what is without doubt is the difficulty of cast changes. We try very hard to avoid rumour and gossip here. Thus we place great store by the information that official bodies give out in an effort to be fair to dancers and companies.

I spoke with the ROH twice yesterday regarding the cast change for last night and was twice told Fadeyev. In fact it was Vladimir Shishov, which was also a name around in the unofficial gossip. Oy veh!

The ROH box Office today gave me the original casting for tonight rather than the revised one with Vishneva!!

In order to help ballet goers, We have used a reliable, but unofficial source, which backs up the material we have heard from elsewhere. Here is the information which you should use to update the Hochhauser/ROH website material and is the best view we have been able to gather, but is still subject to change up to and on the day for injury and other reasons:

Ilya Kuznetsov is not coming to London. Vladimir Shishov will dance all Conrads in "Le Corsaire" in place of Kuznetsov, as far as we know, that is 21st, 23rd July plus 9th August Matinee. However, as Shishov is also scheduled to dance in the 9th August Evening performance, this latter date may change.

Daria Pavlenko will not perform in "Swan Lake" this week and casting has been changed to reflect the situation:

Just as well they're all so wonderful, otherwise one might lose patience with the unique Kirov approach to casting information...thanks by the way to everyone at criticaldance.com for trying to shed light on who's really dancing what. Much appreciated.

I am sure there will be more of that to come. Aside from a brief respite in late August, this troupe won't be on home ground at all between September and January 2004 ... that's a LOT of travel time! I hope injuries don't mount at all in the ranks.

I'm curious too, are they travelling with full orchestra? I know that when they come here to Berkeley, they'll have their own musicians, which must not only make for an major Entourage, but also a major expense!

Yes Mary Ellen, they do have the Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre playing for them. Yes, there is a high cost involved with this, but it can get very tricky when you use local orchestras. The ROH seats 2,200 with prices up to £100, so they are probably pulling in around £100,000 a night from ticket sales and maybe £150,000 on days when there is a matinee as well.

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